The primary goal of this site is to provide mature, meaningful discussion about the Vancouver Canucks. However, we all need a break some time so this forum is basically for anything off-topic, off the wall, or to just get something off your chest! This forum is named after poster Creeper, who passed away in July of 2011 and was a long time member of the Canucks message board community.

Apparently someone detonated a car bomb in central Oslo, and the blast took out most of the ground floor of some government building, where also the prime minister's office lies. Windows were shattered for hundreds of metres from the explosion, and at least seven people were killed.

And shortly after hat, a gun man dressed as a cop visited a youth camp forthe governing labour party and killed at least ten kids...

A number of jihadist groups claim responsibility, but I bet they're just trying to steal credit for it. The gunman, who has been caught and is linked to the blast in downtown Oslo as well, is described as tall and blond, so it could be pretty much anyone...

Sounds like it's an internal Norwegian thing, weird as it sounds.Possibly a crazy loner. There is also speculation about right wing extremism.Stay tuned.

The death toll at the youth camp on Utøya island has now been adjusted to at least 80...

A 32-year old Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested. He's a right wing extremist who calls himself nationalist and has been highly critical of Islam on various web forums. No previous criminal record. In 2009 he started an enterprise growing vegetables, which has enabled him to buy large quantities of fertiliser.

In responce to the Oklahoma City bombing, amendments to Canada's Explosives Act passed in 2008 require a vendor of ammonium nitrate to record the purchases, who bought the fertilizer, and to alert police if they think there is something suspicious about a purchase.

I expect this is typical of democratic countries, however it may be more show than go. The possibility of many small purchases or use of other chemicals (for bomb making) makes this difficult to protect against.

These nut jobs may cause government measures that seriously erode our freedoms.

He promotes a very conservative opinions, which he also called nationalist. He expresses himself strongly opposed to multiculturalism – that cultural differences can live together in a community. Breivik has had many posts on the site Document.no, an Islam-critical site that publishes news and commentary. In one of the posts he states that the policy in day no longer revolves around socialism against capitalism, but that the fight is between nationalism and internationalism.

The 32-year-old is among other things, registered as a member of Oslo gun club and the Masonic Lodge.

Uncle dans leg wrote:That is one person this planet can live without. I wonder if there's a death penalty in Norway. I felt ill when I heard an interview with a survivor on the island.

This guy should be put down like a rabid dog.

The only European country with death penalty is Belarus, which is also the only remaining dicatorship. Abolishing capital punishment is a basic requirement for membership in both the European Union and the Council of Europe.

The more details you hear about what went down, the sicker it gets. The murderer was dressed as a policeman and repeatedly called out that the police had arrived, that everything was under control and that people could come out from hiding, then shot those who did.....

I can't see why they allow people to have automatic guns. If he had only had a hunting rifle they could have taken him when he had to reload.

Uncle dans leg wrote:That is one person this planet can live without. I wonder if there's a death penalty in Norway. I felt ill when I heard an interview with a survivor on the island.

This guy should be put down like a rabid dog.

The only European country with death penalty is Belarus, which is also the only remaining dicatorship. Abolishing capital punishment is a basic requirement for membership in both the European Union and the Council of Europe.

The more details you hear about what went down, the sicker it gets. The murderer was dressed as a policeman and repeatedly called out that the police had arrived, that everything was under control and that people could come out from hiding, then shot those who did.....

I can't see why they allow people to have automatic guns. If he had only had a hunting rifle they could have taken him when he had to reload.

I heard a first hand account from a survivor on tv here in Australia and he was saying it looked like an M-16 but he wasn't firing in full automatic. That doesn't mean he didn't have one but this guy was sure it was all single shots. He was a secretary of some sort in the government and was shot in the shoulder. What really made my stomach turn was that he ran out of ammunition and that's the only reason he stopped. There should be exceptions to the capital punishment rule when the body count reaches numbers like this. It's beyond comprehension what this man has done. He should die.

What has emerged so far paints a disturbing picture: a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism in his country, of the left and of Muslims who had written disparagingly of prominent Norwegian politicians. A far of violent video games as well who some former neighbours have told Norwegian media had sometimes been seen in"military-style" clothing.

In the pictures that have so far emerged of him Breivik appears well dressed, slender and clean-shaven, a picture of the young entrepreneur he wanted to be.

I have a solution: send him to Iran for trial. How's that for multiculturalism?

Per wrote:The murderer was dressed as a policeman and repeatedly called out that the police had arrived, that everything was under control and that people could come out from hiding, then shot those who did.....

The results are horrific. The amount of thought & planning that a fanatic put into this is very disturbing. It's hard to believe that there were no accomplices.

I disagree. The Americans seem to stage massacres (albeit smaller-scale, thus far) on a virtually annual basis, whereas in Europe this is still a freakish, out of this world event.

No amount of regulation is going to prevent something like this with 100% certainty, but gun control is the difference between a nutter needing to hatch an elaborate plot (with a high chance of fucking up along the line), as opposed to casually picking up a gun at the corner shop and opening up at the nearest playground.

Of course everyone is going to draw their own conclusions from this, but to me it underscores the sheer stupidity of the anti-Muslim hysteria that's been gripping Western Europe since 9/11. The 7/7 bombings in London took months of planning by a bunch of bearded men in mosques, and claimed 51 lives. And now one blonde clean-cut Aryan Christian boy manages to almost double the body count in one fell swoop. And yet here we are worrying about a Muslim cell under every bush!

I couldn't believe it when I was watching this on the BBC - the way in which the news was trickling in regarding what was happening with the bomb blast and the camp, I can't even begin to imagine the horror that those children must have been going through as they saw their friends gunned down by a sick, demented waste of life. I hope that there is a speedy trial and he is thrown into a very dank windowless hole for the rest of his days.

Of course, the maximum penalty in Norway is 21 years, and the norm is that you usually only serve two thirds of it, so most likely he'll be out in fourteen years.....

Norway is one of seventeen countries (6 in Europe, 8 in Latin America, 2 in Asia and 1 in Africa) that have abolished life imprisonment (Russia has a special quirk by having life imprisonment, but only for men - not for women!). There's been debate whether we should abolish it in Sweden too, but so far we haven't. It's considered inhumane by human rights organisations and criminogists argue that it robs those convicted of an incentive to better themselves and thus makes rehabilitation less feasible.

I personally think we should keep it. Some people, like Anders Behring Breivik, simply do not deserve to ever be let out.

Per wrote:Of course, the maximum penalty in Norway is 21 years, and the norm is that you usually only serve two thirds of it, so most likely he'll be out in fourteen years.....

Norway is one of seventeen countries (6 in Europe, 8 in Latin America, 2 in Asia and 1 in Africa) that have abolished life imprisonment (Russia has a special quirk by having life imprisonment, but only for men - not for women!). There's been debate whether we should abolish it in Sweden too, but so far we haven't. It's considered inhumane by human rights organisations and criminogists argue that it robs those convicted of an incentive to better themselves and thus makes rehabilitation less feasible.

I personally think we should keep it. Some people, like Anders Behring Breivik, simply do not deserve to ever be let out.

The incentive to better ones self is a right this piece of excrement robbed those people of. If governments won't put these sick animals under when they hurt other people then I'm sure there's over 100 families that would oblige with helping out in this regard. In fact, theres likely many more Norwegian people that are completely unrelated who would probably wait for his release and take real good care of him.